Sunday, January 31, 2010

At the same moment that Twitter may have reached a tipping point —though huge in number of users, its growth has slowed dramatically, and 80% of those users post infrequently or quit outright (more here)— there are those who have found creative uses of its mini-blog service.

Ray Daniels is the founder of the Cicerone Certification Program, an on-line training course for beer sommeliers. He has begun to post a series of lessons on beer ingredients and beer styles, calling it Beer Education — in Twitter-speak: #BeerEd. And, since it's on Twitter, Daniels lectures briefly, in 140 characters or fewer.

Alan McLeod at A Good Beer Blog finds the concept of beer and food pairing superfluous, and the word itself annoying.("Why does that word 'pairing' make my temples ache?") There's only one thing worse than 'pairing' beer and food, he grouses. And that's people writing about 'pairing' beer and food.

So, here, for curmudgeon-in beer Alan, a 'pairing' ... in a picture:

Brooklyn Brewery'sBlack Ops
A 'Russian' Imperial Stout, fermented, than aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled un-carbonated, and re-fermented in the bottle with Champagne yeast. 11.6% alcohol by volume (abv). Only 940 cases produced for 2010.

Modern day Guinness Stout is 4.4% abv. So-called Russian Imperial Stout is fermented to much higher alcohol levels, usually in excess of 8%. These days, more such beers are brewed outside of Russia than within, despite the name, They are said to be named after Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great's penchant (and thus of members of her court) for London stouts, which had been fermented stronger to survive export. There is current historical scholarship which disputes this assertion.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

A beer dinner, that is, a dinner in which each course is paired with a specific beer, does not have to be 'fancy.' But, at least for logic of flavor, the menu should be well thought out.

As an example: mushroom caps stuffed with artichokes and organic pesto and Parmesan, served with Flying Dog Brewery's Old Scratch Amber Lager. The beer's biscuity flavor was the 'cracker' to the pesto.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

In the late 1990s, the Wall Street Journal famously 'reported' that the US 'micro-brewery' movement was a fad —comparing it to the interest in cigars— that would quickly shrink to a small niche of aficionados. They've done it again, in a Julie London "Cry Me A River"-like report on the current woes of the beer business in the US.

Often tendentious when corporate America is involved, the WSJ last week bemoaned that beer sales had slipped 2.2% in 2009. The Murdoch-owned outlet neglected to mention that beer sales by US small breweries had actually shown a robust rate of growth.

In the face of an overall economic slowdown, US small breweries (often imprecisely referred to as craft breweries) increased their sales by dollars by 9% in 2009. This is according to trade publication Beer Marketer's Insights (BMI), as reported by the St. Louis Dispatch (in Anheuser-Busch's hometown, no less).These figures show US small breweries holding their growth at the same rate as it was mid-year, as reported then by the Brewers Association (BA) a trade group for small US brewers.

Anecdotally at least, brewpubs may have suffered less growth or a decline in sales, as did restaurants nationwide as disposable incomes shriveled from 2008 into 2009. Very small breweries may have suffered disproportionally as well. For a more complete picture, we'll have to wait for the figures from the BA to be released.

What a small brewery is is a measure of whose pencil is writing the definition. Based upon upper production levels (and tax rates), brewery practices, and contract brewing, the Brewers Association's view differs from BMI's and that of other journals and groups, Because of that, the BA itself is about to lose a powerful member, with all of its influence and its dues.

The BA defines small brewery as one producing less than two million barrels per year (a barrel is the equivalent of 13.7 cases of beer). Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams beers, is approaching that mark. In fact, it actually booked 2.025 million barrels in 2009, but some of that included so-called malternatives, which the BA does not count toward the total.

I recently attended the Virginia re-release party for Tuppers' Hop Pocket Ale, a 'craft' beer of local renown. In northern Virginia, it is distributed by the wholesaler Guiffré, whose principal beer brands are those of Anheuser-Busch In Bev.

When owner Mike Guiffré introduced Hop Pocket, and its founders Bob and Ellie Tupper, to the gathered crowd, he may have inadvertently referred to all of this. "Tuppers' is fun," he said. "We haven't had much fun lately."

The link to the Wall Street Journal story actually takes you to the Brookston Beer Bulletin, at which there is a lengthy analysis of the piece.

More on the small brewery/Brewers Association conundrum from Beer Scribe.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Beer Advocate and Rate Beer are two well-frequented on-line everyman review repositories. I've posted a grand total of seven reviews at the former. Here at YFGF, I've written an occasional review, and I have few up at Flickr as well, but for the most part, I've abstained.

Anyone can write a beer review; we all have our opinions. De gustibus non disputandum.

As someone who in the past has brewed beer professionally, and who now sells it, I must tread carefully. Saying something derogatory about a beer I do not sell, or flattering about a beer I do sell, would be patently unethical if I did not clearly declare my association.

For those who wish to describe beer, there are certain commonly accepted 'rules' —a stout is dark, a pilsner not— but taste is inherently subjective. Nebulous qualities such as, say, balance or, ugh, 'drinkability' are fungible targets. What was perceived of as harshly bitter last year could, this year, be praised as delicately poised between malt and hops.

And, the vocabulary! One hears testosterone-driven claims to superior sniffing abilities conjoined with a surfeit of absurd metaphors and adjectives. I challenge anyone to describe the flavor salty without, in circular fashion, referring to salt. Likewise sweet with sugar, and so forth.

I appreciate and understand the skill in making a beer, but I (and you) don't taste the technology; I taste the beer. Particular beer flavors have particular identifying words. Tying the right word to the perception of a flavor compound —an ester, aldehyde, fusel alcohol, tactile sensation, or ingredient— is the not-so-mysterious route to achieving a good beer palate. And proffering a good review.

A good review, however, a useful beer review, should overtly display the reviewer's prejudices. With that filter, a reader can better determine whether he or she might like the beer assayed. Without that filter, there's a lack of context that can render the review unhelpful at best, pernicious at worst.

What are my prejudices?

I prefer beer that is both flavorful and refreshing. I prefer beer of elegance, beauty, and charm over beer created for flummery and look-what-I-did-ma. I prefer my beer to be a friend rather than an adversary. Although I do enjoy aged beer, I prefer beer that is fresh. I prefer beer drawn from a cask over that pushed from a keg. I often prefer draft to bottle. I enjoy beers from elsewhere; I prefer beers that are local. I prefer beer that has a reason to be, that has a liquid logic, over a beer created with a because-I-could genesis. I prefer beer that has a back story. I prefer beer that plays well with food. I prefer beer that encourages a second pint. I prefer beer in company rather than isolation.

For me, beer is not simply a product or a number. Beer is a thing of beauty, and a thing that brings beauty. When it's quantified as a numbered score, or as a price-point, or as a demographic category, beer is rendered as a formalistic, non-aesthetic, quotidian thing. If rating beauty, what really is the difference between a 92 and a 93?

2010.01.19The domain name www.abinbev.com belongs to a South Korean dating service. Anheuser-Busch InBev files lawsuit to get it back. http://bit.ly/8o2fWg

2010.01.19For the first time since 1949, a 'mysterious' visitor did NOT place a rose and full cognac bottle at Edgar Allan Poe's grave in Baltimore, Maryland, on the anniversary of the author's birthday (201st). http://bit.ly/8I9xvv

2010.01.19Room for beer education. Overheard yesterday in a beer/wine shop: I don't want beer with dessert. That's just weird.

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Clamps and Gaskets is a weekly wrap-up of stories not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not. But all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter account: twitter.com/cizauskas.

The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

When you tell someone you’re vegan, they ask (often incredulously) 'What do you eat?!

To that, the writers of the blog Eat Air have had a hilarious response, right there in the name of their blog. To my dismay, they have announced that they are calling it quits.

I won't be updating this blog anymore. I'm finding I just don't have the time or energy to keep writing regularly and more importantly to keep it fresh and interesting. I've had so much fun writing this blog these last 4+ years. There were very few vegan food blogs when we started but now there are hundreds - please go show them some love.

I've cooked several of the recipes, but there was one in particular that initially was received with skepticism but then enthusiastic approval after I had prepared it. It's a vegan recipe: no cheese was grated to make it.

Vegan Mac un Cheese

When you spend all your time in the kitchen making cupcakes instead of making dinner, here's a quick and easy recipe so you can have something other than just cupcakes for dinner. This is a variation on a recipe I make quite often from Very Vegetarian by Jannequin Bennett and Carl Lewis.

Monday, January 18, 2010

2010.01.16Australia considers progressive beer tax based on the level of alcohol by volume (abv). Could this be a sobering warning for US craft breweries? http://bit.ly/5eVYe1

2010.01.16Announced for 27 March 2010: a Real Ale Festival, as a joint effort of the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the Society for the Preservation of Beer From the Wood (SPBW) and the Pratt Street Ale House. Casks featured from breweries in the US mid-Atlantic and England. Membership in the SPBW required: http://bit.ly/5N3W3u

2010.01.11The power of Twitter is pulling together an audience, talking to them directly, letting them reply directly. http://bit.ly/zDKmP

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Clamps and Gaskets is a weekly wrap-up of stories not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not. But all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter account: twitter.com/cizauskas.

The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.

All brewers, Belgian or American or otherwise, ought to have the freedom to play around with various hops and yeasts without it [their beer] suddenly being nailed down and pigeonholed into some imaginary style.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Frank Thorp V, an American aid worker, was in the mountains 100 miles away from Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck, and at first he didn’t realize how serious it was. But then he learned that it had leveled the Haitian capital and that his wife, Jillian, was trapped in the wreckage of a building. He departed to the city immediately and pulled Jillian from under the rubble of the former Mission House for the Haitian Ministrieswhere she had been pinned beneath concrete, bricks and wood for nearly 10 hours. She survived with miraculously minor injuries.

Frank was a member of the Rustico Restaurant service team before striking out on his career in communications alongside wife Jillian. Jillian is the sister of Kate Cook whom many of you have seen supervising service at Buzz Bakery. Frank’s parents are longtime Alexandria residents and personal friends of our family of businesses. In August 2009, Jillian moved to Haiti to begin working full-time Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, a U.S. based humanitarian aid organization. In January 2010, Frank moved down to Haiti to be with Jillian.

Donations will be directed to the Haitian Emergency Rebuilding Operation (H.E.R.O.), a foundation developed by the Thorps in the aftermath of this crisis. Their website is www.haitianheroes.org or simply visit any of our restaurants throughout the week to make a donation. Additionally, all of our restaurants will feature items on their menus (indicated with a red cross), the proceeds of which will be donated on our behalf to both H.E.R.O. and the Red Cross.

The Neighborhood Restaurant Group will also host a fundraiser with Jillian and Frank on Wednesday, January 20 at Columbia Firehouse Restaurant from 6 until 9. We’ll ask for a $40 donation per guest (no reservations, donation collected upon arrival, complimentary hors d’oeuvres and cash bar.) and will encourage additional donations throughout the evening on behalf of H.E.R.O. Please come out to help out.

More events in Washington D.C. to help Haitian earthquake victims: here.

Caveat lector (although on this occasion, it might not be necessary to indicate): As a representative for northern Virginia wine/beer wholesaler Select Wines, Inc., I sell wine and beer to the Neighborhood Restaurant Group.

Using the 'way-back' machine, a photo from a 2004 'vertical' tasting of several vintages of J.W. Lees Harvest Ales: 1986, 1988, 1997, 1999, 2001, and four wood iterations from 2003: Calvados, Sherry, Port, and Lagavulin whisky.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Enjoy an 'adult' beverage tonight, and do so with poignant gusto. Remember that, on this day in 1920, it would be the last occasion for 13+ years before a US citizen could again legally enjoy an alcoholic beverage.

Prohibition —the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution— took effect on 16 January 1920. It would not be until 5 December 1933 that Prohibition would be repealed, by the 21st Amendment.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Details are coming out from Haiti as the day begins, but yet again that small nation has been beset with injury so disproportionate to its size and wealth. An earthquake of a 7 on the Richter scale struck the island yesterday.

The non-profit Network For Good lists several NGOs to which one can contribute to help the survivors. Some of them:

AmeriCares

Doctors without Borders

Mercy Corps

Oxfam America

Partners in Health

Save the Children

UNICEF

Or, use your cellphone to text HAITI to the number 90999. Doing so will automatically donate $10 to the Red Cross. The charge will be added on to your next bill. UPDATE: As of Saturday, 16 January, $10 million had been raised from this method alone. Some of the phone carriers were pledging to immediately send the funds rather than waiting until customers had paid their bills.

Some events in Washington, D.C. to raise funds to help Haitian earthquake victims: here.

2010.01.07Big brewers drag US beer industry down 1.6% in 2009. (Also: an Alcohol Beverage Control scandal in North Carolina) http://tinyurl.com/ye24cz7

2010.01.04Three years of great beer blogging ended yesterday in the UK. Early 'Stonch' is remembered at Canadian beer blog: http://bit.ly/62s8Uh

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Clamps and Gaskets is a weekly wrap-up of stories not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not. But all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter account: twitter.com/cizauskas.

The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

A true fan of Bigfoot —Sierra Nevada Brewing's barleywine-style ale— shows his 'big' devotion. His tattoo has since been inked in full color.

A barleywine is not a wine but an ale of close to wine's alcoholic strength. From Sierra Nevada's website:

This year marks the 25th release of Bigfoot®. Our award-winning barleywine boasts a dense, fruity bouquet, an intense flavor palate and a deep reddish-brown color. Its big maltiness is superbly balanced by a wonderfully bittersweet hoppiness.

Tuppers' Hop Pocket Ale is in bottles and kegs, and in only a few days trucks will begin bringing them to the Washington DC area. It's pricey and will be in short supply for a while, but we'll be increasing production in the next several weeks, and availability should increase steadily through the winter and spring.

On January 19th [at Hard Times Cafe, in Bethesda, Maryland] starting at 5pm, we'll have the first pouring anywhere of the revived Tuppers' Hop Pocket. Ellie and I will be there; there will be souvenir glasses and door prizes on the hour. Best of all, Hard Times is donating 25% of the entire gross for the night to programs that assist homeless and distressed families.

On the 20th at the Brickskeller, we have our DC inaugural pouring between 7 and 9. Glasses while supplies last; a share of the proceeds will go to Children's Hospital.

Almost immediately after its introduction in 1994, Tuppers' Hop Pocket Ale, an "extravagantly hopped" pale ale, would be considered by many to be the iconic locally-produced brand of the Washington, D.C. area. Hop Pocket Ale won a gold medal in the American-Style Pale Ale category at the Great American Beer Festival in 1997. The Hop Pocket Pils (not yet re-released) won gold in 2001.

The Old Dominion Brewing Company produced Tuppers' under contract for school teacher/beer raconteur Bob Tupper and scientific editor Ellie Tupper, but when that brewery was sold in 2007, production ended. The 'new' Tuppers is brewed by the St. George Brewing Company in Hampton, Virginia.

On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

For more information and to host a Session, go to the archive page at the Brookston Beer Bulletin

The Session began its course as a cross-blog discussion of beer styles. Since then, it has veered into beer-lifestyle discussions ... not that there's anything wrong with that! For February's Session, I'd like to return to essays on a beer style, or more precisely, a beer procedure: Cask-conditioned ale.

Cask-conditioned ale —or "real ale" as it is called, somewhat boastfully, by the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), a beer consumer advocacy group in the UK— is defined by that organization as

beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

Viewers of this blog have read my opinions on cask-conditioned ale, and probably once too often. So, let's hear yours, and not only yours. Why not invite brewers and drinkers and bemused casked-spectators to contribute essays for the Session?

Make the post a definitional thing: other than that CAMRA description, what 'is' cask-conditioned ale? Or, make it an encomium: how cask-conditioned ale will transform the world. Or, make it a style harangue: why saisons, for example, should have no place in a cask, or should.

Or, make your post a lifestyle essay: how you first lost your c-c-a virginity. Make it a cultural debate: how Americans have 'extremed' the cask experience, or how Americans need further lessons from the British.

Make it an ale vs. lager knockdown: can lagers be cask-conditioned? Make it a zymurgical and practical thing: how does your brewery commercially produce and transport cask-conditioned ale?

Make it a 'pesce' PETA thing: can one be a vegetarian and drink cask ale? Make it a beer ticker thing: who makes the best, and who serves the best?

Make it a cellarmanship thing: how should a pub handle a cask? Make it an international thing: where was the most unexpected place you drank a pint of cask-conditioned ale? Make it a geek thing: at what temperature to serve, to sparkle or not sparkle, and how clear should clear be?

Make it a sad story. Make it a love story. But ... make it! And make it here, Friday, February 5.

Write your story (500 to 1,000 words would be fine.), then link to it here on the 5th as a comment or at my own post that day. A few days later, I'll collate, analyze, comment, and link back. Include some photos, too: of casks, of imbibing their contents, of filling them.

Above all, let's have perspective folks, perspective! Cask-conditioned ale is not a matter of life and death; it's much more.

My thanks, of course, go to Stan Hieronymus and Jay Brooks. They have organized, encouraged, and gently cajoled to get this resource —The Session: Beer Blogging Friday— on the web every month since March of 2007.

If you don't have a blog but wish to contribute, please do! Cut and paste your essay into the comment form here: http://thomas.cizauskas.net/contact.html. If it doesn't fit, use that page to contact me and I'll respond back. Just do it by Thursday 4 February, so that I can post it by the next day!

2009.12.29Chef Bryan Voltaggio of Restaurant Volt pushes Frederick County to be the first county in Maryland to allow restaurant patrons to bring in bottles of wine purchased elsewhere. http://bit.ly/5HwSTe

2009.12.27The Music They Made - a slideshow of musical greats who died in 2009: http://bit.ly/6eAshZ

2009.12.27First there was "Hops and Glory," a recounting of an attempt to recreate Pale Ale's 19th century journey by sailing ship from England to India. Now, an attempt to brew Allsopp's Arctic Ale (and follow its 19th century journey) for a documentary. http://ow.ly/Qe3S

Clamps and Gaskets is a weekly wrap-up of stories not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not. But all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter account: twitter.com/cizauskas.

The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.